Mary (Ketcham) Duncan (1717-1757)

She lived with her family in a large 3-storey house on Pearl Street (then Queen Street), or Hanover Square. In 1757, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. Mary and all but two of her children were burned to death in the nursery on the third floor where they were sleeping as they were all suffering from smallpox. Arabella (who was then just a baby) had been sent out of the house with her nurse; and, Frances was encouraged by a British officer, Captain Miller, to leap from an upper floor window. She was saved but, "he never recovered from the shock his frame received in sustaining her". Some of the servants who jumped weren't so lucky and were impaled on the iron railings. Mary was also encouraged to jump from a window but she refused to leave her children and died with them. Her husband never smiled again and died in 1760.